


The First Time 'Round

by PR Zed (przed)



Category: Edge of Tomorrow (2014)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-17
Updated: 2014-12-17
Packaged: 2018-03-01 21:03:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2787686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/przed/pseuds/PR%20Zed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time you meet Private Cage, you think Christ, not another one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The First Time 'Round

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sirona](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sirona/gifts).



The first time you meet Private Cage, you think Christ, not another one.

Because men tend to fall into two types for you by this point. The ones who want to fuck you, and the ones who want to prove they're more macho than the Full Metal Bitch.

You don't have a use for either type, so you try to scare him off.

"Do I have something on my face, soldier?"

Except he's not one of the two types. Not at all. He's a third type. He's _you_. He's you during Verdun, poor bastard. And he hasn't been doing this too many times because he's scared and confused and just wants it to go away.

You remember what that's like. You remember it too fucking well. You remember it so well that you feel your heart speed up and the sweat form on your palms. You wonder if Cage can tell that you're shaking in spite of how hard you're acting as you hustle him down to see Carter.

You watch Cage as Carter runs through his dog and pony show, explains how the Drones and Alphas and Omegas work. Or at least, how they think the Drones and Alphas and Omegas work. And you can't help being disappointed in him. Not because he's scared. It's a fucking scary thing, dying only to repeat the same fucking day all over again. He'd be an idiot if he weren't scared. No, it's because you've seen him on the telly, selling new recruits on how they can become glorious heroes just like you, Sergeant Rita Vrataski. He might be scared now, but underneath the fear you can see the glib, slimy bastard he is. He's the farthest thing from a hero you can think of. And you need to turn him into a hero. You need to turn him into what you became, and you need to do it before those bloody Mimics figure out who he is and what he's done and take back the reset power. You need to end this war before the Mimics end the human race. 

So you take the glib, slimy, _scared_ bastard back to the training centre and you suit him up and work him hard until he fucks up and breaks his back and you have to shoot him. And you hope against hope that you'll remember something about him after the reset.

* * *

The first time you kill Private William Cage—except it isn't the first time, it probably isn't even the fiftieth time, and Cage won't tell you how many times you've trained him and shot him—you remember what it's like: the dying. You remember your first few deaths, the ones when you were as raw a recruit as Cage must have been when you started this, when you never lasted more than a few minutes on the killing fields of Verdun before a Mimic would rip into you and you'd wake up gasping and screaming in the barracks. You remember the later deaths, when you figured out the rules, when you realized you had to die or the day wouldn't restart. You remember the first time the Mimics didn't kill you, not all the way, and you had to pull out your sidearm and shoot yourself. You remember the unimaginable pain of dying. Except it's not so unimaginable after you do it time after time after fucking time.

You remember and you try to forget, because Cage has broken his leg and you need to reset the day and you take out your weapon and aim it. You wonder how many more times you're going to have to do this, and if you have the flashbacks to your own deaths every time. Even though you can't remember the previous times you've trained Cage and killed him, you wonder if his deaths weigh upon your soul, if you'll be called to account for each death on the day you finally die for real.

But you can't think of all that. Not and do your job, your duty. So you clench your jaw and aim and pull the trigger.

* * *

The first time you reach the farmhouse—it feels like the first time; it _has_ to be the first time—you've begun to think that this is it, this is the time you make it to the dam, the time you take out the Omega. There's a bit of tinned food, there's some miraculous coffee and an even more miraculous helicopter out back.

But then Cage spoils it for you. 

You start to realize things are off when he's patching up the gash in your shoulder, performing the first aid like he's done it before. But he hasn't told you you've been here before. All day he's always told you when you've done something before.

Then he gets you your coffee and is so eager to get you three sugars for it, and that's when you really know. This isn't the first time you've been here. It's pretty fucking far from the first time you've been here.

You're furious. How _dare_ he not tell you. But then it gets worse. He starts trying to talk you out of starting up the heli. He tries to talk you into staying at the farmhouse. He tries to talk you into _hiding_ , for fuck's sake.

You're a soldier. You don't hide. Not ever. Not even when you're facing a death your companion knows is certain because he's seen it before. Many times before.

'You die here," Cage says. "Right here. I can't save you. And if I go on and kill the Omega, you're dead. Forever."

"Why does it matter what happens to me?" you say, trying to understand in spite of the fury you're feeling at this moment.

"I wish…I didn't know you. But I do."

Cage looks shattered, looks broken. He looks like someone who cares. That's it: the stupid fucker cares about you.

You've been there. You were that stupid fucker once, twice, three hundred times. You cared about Hendricks. Not at first, because at first he was just a battle-hardened veteran who'd been saddled with a green squad and he didn't give a rat's arse about any of you. He didn't expect any of you to survive the day's battle. He was right about that. Or would have been, if it hadn't been an Alpha that killed you the first time.

After every reset you got just a little bit better at the fighting, and he started to notice you, started to train you up properly in the little time you had before battle.

He started to feel like a friend, not just the mad bastard who'd been put in charge of your squad, so it was him you finally told about the Alpha and the resets and reliving the same day over and over. He proved he was a friend by not looking at you like you were fucking insane. He believed you the first time you told him, and every time afterward.

It was Hendricks who introduced you to Carter, and Hendricks who became your trusted partner in battle, the one who followed your lead and listened to your advice because you knew what was going to happen. He fought for you every time you told the general what had happened to you and they sent you to the psych ward. He got himself arrested when Carter told the wrong scientist and they took you away before they took you apart. (Dissection, you'd told Cage. That wasn't quite true. It was only dissection if the thing you were carving up was dead already.) That was the only time someone else besides Hendricks and Carter had believed you. After that you were careful to only tell Hendricks and to not let Carter tell anyone else.

Hendricks was the only fellow soldier you ever fucked, and you only ever let that happen twice. Once because you were looking for a way to transfer the reset power. And once because you'd gone through the same shit for two hundred and eighty-nine days and you were done and you needed, if only for a little while, to act like a woman who could afford to feel instead of a soldier whose feelings would kill her.

None of it mattered in the end. Not what Hendricks had done for you, not what you'd done for him, not that you'd fucked him, not what you'd meant to each other. Nothing. Because every time, every single fucking time, he ended up dead. And the last time his death had been permanent.

And now you're on the other side of the fence. You're Cage's Hendricks. You didn't want it, you tried to avoid it, but it's happened.

You nearly scream in frustration, but instead you turn the heli's key, bringing its engine to wheezy life, determined to prove Cage wrong. You'll survive this. You both will. You'll show him.

But even as the blades begin to spin and you rise off the ground, you see the Mimic heading for you and hear its awful shriek. You lose track of where Cage is as you fight to control a machine that's being ripped apart by an alien invader, an invader that's trying to rip you apart as well. And then you're crashing into the barn and being thrown from the wreckage and with your fading senses you can hear Cage fighting.

You're dying, and you're going to go through this all again when the Mimics kill Cage and the day resets one more time. So is Cage. Except he's going to remember it.

Your anger evaporates in an instant. You can't stay angry at Cage. Not for trying to save you. Not when you'd tried to save Hendricks so very many times.

Your vision is practically gone, but you hear Cage approach. You raise your hand and feel him take it in his. You try and squeeze his hand, but you don't have any strength left. You need to let him know how you feel, to let him know you can care, that you do care. But you're running out of time.

Then it comes to you, that bullshit conversation you had with Cage in the car when he tried to get to know you. When he tried to draw you out with a mix of truth ("You tell me about the time you went there with your family. Your brother got lost.") and lies ("You tell me your middle name. Payton."). And you know how to do it, to let him know how you feel.

"My middle name is Rose," you say with the last of your strength, gifting him with the truth, with proof that he has your trust. You hope that proof will carry him through the next reset, and all the ones after that until you both figure out a way past this farmhouse and you manage to find and kill the Omega.

You hope you've done the right thing. But then your vision returns for a brief moment as your body is shutting down. You see Cage's face. Your truth hasn't saved Cage. It's broken him. Utterly.

* * *

The first time you've ever let yourself be distracted before battle, you're on the training floor. You're doing strength moves that few of the men and none of the other women on the squad can manage. It's all designed to intimidate, from the blatant show of strength to the choice to do your workout surrounded by spinning training drones that could break you in two. And the intimidation does what you want. The squad respects you, they'll back you up, they'll follow you into battle, but none of them are stupid enough to try and be your friend. 

You don't do friends. (Carter doesn't count; he's a non-combatant.) You made that mistake once before, and look how well that worked out. There'll never be anyone like Hendricks again.

Not that any of it matters. Tomorrow will be your first battle without the reset power. You suspect that it'll be your last. You suspect that the Mimics have known about you all along, that they're going to toy with you tomorrow before they destroy you, and, along with you, the largest force humanity has ever assembled.

You're just deciding whether to suit up and run some training exercises or to say fuck it and hit one of the illegal secret pubs that cropped up as soon as the top brass decided this was going to be a dry base when someone walks onto the training floor.

You push up to your feet in one fluid movement, wondering who this interloper is.

"Do I have something on my face, soldier?" you demand as he stares at you.

His stare is unnerving. He's not like anyone else who's approached you. They're usually either hero-worshipping gits or sexist bastards who want to take you down a peg or two. But not this bloke. He doesn't want to fuck you and he doesn't want to humiliate you, but you don't know what he does want, and that is enough to alarm you. The unknown has a surprising habit of turning around and biting you in the arse.

Just as you're about press him further, the man backs down.

"Sorry to disturb you, Sergeant," he says in flat American tones before he turns and walks off the training room floor.

The American is a puzzle you can't stop thinking about. Who is he? What did he want?

You think about him all day. You think about him when you're suiting up for battle. You think about him when your drop ship barely makes it to the beach. You think about him as you're killing your twentieth Mimic of the day. And you think about him, finally, as the twenty-first Mimic evades your killing blow and delivers its own instead.

* * *

Your first time in Paris, your _only_ time in Paris, you're more terrified than you've been since before Verdun. Because you only have one chance at this. Cage has lost the reset power, and you haven't had it for ages. If you fail here, if you die, humanity dies with you.

But terror is tempered with hope. Cage's J squad are a sorry bunch of bastards, but they have more heart than a lot of elite squads you've come across. As you set across the Channel in a stolen drop ship you actually believe you can get away with this insanity.

Your belief survives the approach to Paris. Survives dropping from a burning ship short of your target. Survives losing every member of J squad. Because Cage believes, too.

Oh, he doesn't believe that either of you is getting out of this alive. That's clearly not going to happen. But he believes you can destroy the Omega. 

There's only one way that's going to happen. You have to be the one to distract the Alpha, leaving Cage and his torn-up leg to hobble over to the Omega's lair so he can blow the fucker up.

But Cage is fighting the inevitable. He wants to be the one to distract the Alpha. It seem he's learned nothing, that he's stupid enough to believe that chivalry will win the day. You're deciding whether giving him a cuff 'round the head might convince him to do the right thing when he finally relents. He reaches out and takes the grenades from you, and that's when you know it's going to work, you're going to win. Or at least humanity is going to win. You and Cage are both going to be dead within minutes.

This is it, the last time you'll breathe air on this earth, the last time you'll see Cage. You need to say something to him, let him know what you feel about him, even though you're not quite sure _what_ you feel about him. And it's not like you have the leisure of time to figure it out.

"Thank you for getting me this far," you say. Because getting to the Omega, that really is the most important thing Cage has done for you. But it's not the only thing you need to say.

"You're a good man, Cage. I wish I had the chance to know you better."

And then you kiss him.

The kiss is not about love, it's not about sex. It's about an intimacy much more powerful than any of that. It's about trusting someone enough to fight beside him, enough to die beside him.

You pull back quickly and then you start running before you can see the expression on Cage's face. You concentrate on nothing but staying in front of the Alpha, making sure it doesn't get to Cage. It's a delicate game, letting it see you but trying to stay out of its grasp for as long as possible. Because every second you keep this monster chasing you is another second it can't get to Cage. But it's faster and more agile and possibly smarter than you, and it finally catches up to you, whipping one of its tentacles of steel and fire out to slice you.

You brace for the pain as you hope that you've given Cage enough time, but the darkness comes before you hear the grenades explode.

* * *

The first time you meet Bill Cage—the real first time, the one you're going to remember forever and ever—you're in the training centre and you're working out and you're trying to cope with an unfamiliar emotion.

Hope.

You have hope for the first time in so long. They're saying that there was a power pulse on the Continent, that the Mimics are dying in droves. They're saying tomorrow's landing is going to be a clean-up job. You hope they're right. You really do. But you're also just a tiny bit jealous. Because if it's really happened, if the Mimics really are dead or dying, then it must be because someone else got the reset power, because someone else figured out how to kill them.

You wish it had been you.

Then Bill Cage strolls into the training centre and onto the floor. The training drones are whirring around him and he's walking through them all like he doesn't care that they could take his head off.

Or like he knows exactly where they're going to be.

You pop up to your feet, your breathing coming fast all of a sudden.

"Yes. What do you want?" you ask.

And what does he do, this American major with his perfect uniform and his perfect teeth? He throws back his head and he laughs. A laugh of relief and recognition and understanding.

You think, _you cocky little bastard_ , even as you start to smile yourself. Because you know without him telling you who killed the Mimics. And you know who helped him. And you're not jealous anymore. Not in the slightest.

The last thing you think before Cage says anything, before he tells you how you met and what happened over there, before he even tells you his name, is that it's a good thing you've always had a thing for cocky little bastards.


End file.
